Existing comment:
The High Water Mark:
"Too bad! Too bad! Oh! Too bad!" -- General Robert E. Lee, CSA, Commander, Army of Northern Virginia.
"Thank God." -- Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, USA, Commander, Army of the Potomac.
Speaking of the Confederates who had executed Pickett's Charge, General Lee reflected "I never saw troops behave more magnificently..." Yet, this last great assault at Gettysburg, among the greatest made by American soldiers, failed to crumble the Union Defenses.
"Hurrahs" rose the Union soldiers here as the Confederate tide ebbed. 12,000 Confederates had thrown themselves against the Union line -- nearly half had been killed, wounded, or captured. General Meade prepared his men for another attack on the 4th, but it never came. That night, Lee's army began its muddy retreat into Virginia.
Years after the battle, Pickett's Charge and its failure came to be known as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy." The war would continue for nearly two more years, but Lee's Army of Northern Virginia would not invade the North again. A Union officer who had witnessed Pickett's Charge wrote, "from that time on, the march of the rebellion was toward Appomattox." |